Here is the definitive 2-CD set of vintage tracks from one of the greatest stars of the 20s and 30s, Ruth Etting – for years America’s favourite female vocalist.

Ruth Etting (1907-1978) was the queen of the torch singers and one of the most popular of all entertainers during the period of the late 20s and early 30s. Slim, blonde and dramatic, she was known as “America’s Sweetheart of Song”. No fewer than 62 of her recordings were hits. Her remarkable life story (she was for 15 years married to the notorious gangster “Moe the Gimp”) was depicted in the 1955 biopic Love Me Or Leave Me starring Doris Day (a special bonus track at the end of disc one presents Day’s recording of the title track).

Love Me Or Leave Me is also the title of Retrospective’s generous double album of 51 inimitable Ruth Etting performances. No fewer than 37 of them were the equivalent of “chart” hits, including 13 Top Fives. Among the biggest were the poignant Ten Cents A Dance, her Ziegfeld Follies showstopper Shaking The Blues Away, and the Fred Ahlert songs I’ll Get By, Mean To Me and Life Is A Song. And she is heard giving her inimitable treatment to many of the greatest ‘standards’: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, Close Your Eyes, I’ll Never Be The Same. This last is a prime example of her delightful ‘trademark’ of changing tempo half way through a song, as are Crying For The Carolines, Nevertheless and the irresistible It Was So Beautiful.

Track listing:
CD1 (1926-1929)
1 Love Me Or Leave Me
2 Lonesome And Sorry
3 But I Do, You Know I Do!
4 ’Deed I Do
5 What Do We Do On A Dew-Dew-Dewy Day
6 It All Depends On You
7 I’m Nobody’s Baby
8 Sam, The Old Accordion Man
9 Shaking The Blues Away
10 The Song Is Ended, But The Melody Lingers On
11 Keep Sweeping The Cobwebs Off The Moon
12 Back In Your Own Back Yard
13 When You’re With Somebody Else
14 Ramona
15 Happy Days And Lonely Nights
16 Because My Baby Don’t Mean Maybe Now
17 Beloved
18 Sonny Boy
19 My Blackbirds Are Bluebirds Now
20 You’re The Cream In My Coffee
21 I’ll Get By As Long As I Have You
22 Button Up Your Overcoat
23 Mean To Me
24 More Than You Know
25 Cryin’ For The Carolines
- Bonus Track –
26 Love Me Or Leave Me – By Doris Day (1955)

CD2 (1930-1937)
1 Ten Cents A Dance
2 Funny, Dear, What Love Can Do
3 Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
4 Don’t Tell Him What Happened To Me
5 Just A Little Closer
6 If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight
7 Body And Soul
8 Love Is Like That, What Can You Do?
9 Nevertheless I’m In Love With You
10 Shine On, Harvest Moon
11 Guilty
12 Me!
13 A Faded Summer Love
14 Cuban Love Song
15 It Was So Beautiful
16 I’ll Never Be The Same
17 Linger A Little Longer In The Twilight
18 Close Your Eyes
19 Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
20 Riptide
21 Easy Come, Easy Go
22 Life Is A Song, Let’s Sing It Together
23 You
24 It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie
25 There’s A Lull In My Life
26 Goodnight, Sweetheart